WINNING WITH THE WORD “Winning with the Word” is a weekly blog that will help you to be a winner in life by applying God’s principles for living the abundant life as found in the Bible, God’s manual for life.

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Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, novelist and life coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is Monday, March 21, 2022, and this is Episode #12 of Series 2022. This episode is titled "The Hidden Subtlety of Stress".

All stress is self-imposed.  Whoa, Dr. MaryAnn! What are you saying? And how dare you say it? Don't you know that stress comes from outside circumstances? I can't help being stressed.

I hear you, my friend. I was in your shoes at one time. But I learned that if I'm stressed, it's my own fault. And if you're stressed, it's your own fault.

I know you don't like to hear that. Neither did I. But, bottomline, it's the truth, so we both may as well face it.

So, you're probably thinking I owe you an explanation. I agree. Here goes.

God created us in such a way that peace is the norm for us humans. In fact, God has provided the Bible--particularly, the New Testament--to teach us how to live in peace. The problem is, we don't obey His instructions.

For example, are you obeying the following instructions that God has given us to keep free from stress?

1. John 14: 1 - "Do not let your heart be troubled." The Good News Translation says it like this: "Do not be worried and upset."  Are you letting your heart be troubled? Are you allowing yourself to be worried and upset?

Notice the wording here: Do not LET or ALLOW your heart to be troubled. This means that we control whether or not our heart is troubled. Whether we are worried or not is entirely in our hands.

1. Colossians 3: 15 - "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts."  Here again, God uses the word "let", meaning "allow". He is instructing us to allow Christ's peace to rule in our hearts. This command implies that we can also NOT allow Christ's peace to rule in our hearts. We have a choice to allow ourselves to be ruled by Christ's peace or not.

The opposite of peace is stress. If we don't allow Christ's peace to rule in our hearts, we will experience worry and stress. If we do allow Christ's peace to rule in our hearts, we won't experience worry and stress. Again, the choice is ours. 

1. Philippians 4: 6 - "Do not be anxious about anything." Anxiety is a major problem today. Most of the prayer requests I receive have to do with anxiety of some sort. Yet, God has commanded us not to be anxious about anything. ANYTHING! This command implies that we have a choice. That we have control over anxiety.

One of the greatest tricks of Satan today is to convince us that we have no control over our emotions. Because we believe this lie, we give in to our emotions. We allow them to rule us because we think we have no power over them.

But the truth is that we do have power and control over our emotions. And we need to begin exercising that power in order to get rid of stress in our lives.

At the same time, in order to exercise power and control over our emotions, we need the grace of God. We cannot do this in our own strength. We humans have a sin nature, and that is our default nature. Unless we are born again,